America's Heritage

by Ryan Burgett.

While LBCCS strives to stay clear of modern politics, sometimes modern politics move into our domain of history and truth. In this case we are seeing the controversy in Texas surrounding changes to their public school education curriculum. The majority of the board supports language that presents American history more appropriately in the context of its religious heritage, while the opponents claim that it is all revisionist history. In the articles that have been published relating to this controversy, one name keeps coming up, David Barton. While his credentials are lacking by most modern standards, it must be admitted that he has put in lots of personal study and is well stocked with quotes and excerpts from historical documents to back up his claims. In this particular case, I would consider him right on. In his recommendation to the Texas School Board, he listed five principles that can be found in the Declaration of Independence and are essential to understanding the true history of our nation's founding. The five he listed are:

1. There is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature.
2. There is a Creator.
3. The Creator gives to man certain unalienable rights.
4. Government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual.
5. Below God-given rights and moral laws, government is directed by the consent of the governed.

I agree that those principles are both the foundation of our nation and also the reason our nation has become the greatest nation the world has ever seen. These principles have nothing to do with sexual orientation or abortion or any other modern political hot topics. This is not a political issue, and anyone that is trying to make it such (and these people can be found on both sides of the controversy) are wrong for doing so. This is a historical issue. If you read the history of the Enlightenment, the history of our nation's founding, and the words of our founding fathers, you can see that these principles were not the crazy ideas of religious radicals, but mainstream ideas that were accepted by the majority of Americans.

So let us never take it upon ourselves to revise true history, but let us also not be afraid to present the truth regardless of how controversial it might be.